Mark Twain Quotes

1,400 Sourced Quotes

But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.

Mark Twain
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded.

Mark Twain
When we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.

Mark Twain
A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

Mark Twain
You can't keep a juvenile moral institution alive on two displays of its sash per year.

Mark Twain
We asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was. Well, said he, after considering, and with the air of one who wishes to take time and be accurate, It's a hell of a place. A description which was photographic for exactness.

Mark Twain
Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.

Mark Twain
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.

Mark Twain
There is nothing like instances to grow hair on a bald-headed argument.

Mark Twain
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

Mark Twain
My memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.

Mark Twain
He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.

Mark Twain
You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done.

Mark Twain
How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps!

Mark Twain
Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.

Mark Twain
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Mark Twain
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Mark Twain
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Law can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Mark Twain
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

Mark Twain
When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there- in sunny weather- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose.

Mark Twain
Don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can.

Mark Twain
So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.

Mark Twain
There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Mark Twain
Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

Mark Twain
What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.

Mark Twain
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Mark Twain
You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting.

Mark Twain
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

Mark Twain
The proverb says, "Born lucky, always lucky," and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.

Mark Twain
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Mark Twain